Tag Archives: liberal reform

Last year the Economist ran a fascinating article on “The strange rebirth of Liberal England” on how young people have attitudes in many areas which are very liberal, though as we know this does not necessarily equate with voting for the Lib Dems. Liberal Reform explored this further at a fringe meeting in Glasgow which included some polling on Generation Y. Our three panellists, Kavya Kaushik, Jeremy Browne and Paul Marshall, with Chair Miranda Green talked about the polling and what Lib Dems could do to attract Generation Y to vote for us.

The polling is very clear on personal liberalism: for example the percentage saying homosexuality is wrong, that people who want children should get married, and that a husbands job is to earn money the wife’s to look after the home and family are all lower for Generation Y. They also have markedly more Liberal views on immigration, being the only age group to see it as a net positive.

London is widely regarded as a liberal city. It is not, however, a Liberal Democrat city.

The party now controls just one council and has only 6% of the councillors, as well as 2 London Assembly members. And yet, at least anecdotally, London should be our city. It’s diverse and often cosmopolitan.

One of the most striking aspects of the 2014 British Social Attitudes survey was that over half of Londoners welcomed immigration as good for the economy – almost double the number of people who did so in the rest of the UK. In Merton, a losing UKIP councillor blamed the “more media-savvy and educated” Londoners for her party’s lack of success. Although she was widely mocked for this statement, the results would suggest that large parts of London are not natural UKIP territory.

Liberal Reform have submitted their recommendation to the Gurling Review on the recent election campaigns.

We believe that the Party needs to present a set of policies around the theme of freedom and opportunity which will allow the electorate to see how a government containing Liberal Democrats would be different from the other two parties

The Submission has 5 areas where we believe the Party needs to focus on for 2015

Clear reasons for voting Liberal Democrat

We can no longer rely on people to vote for us because we are ‘none of the other …

Lib Dem party president Tim Farron has given his personal backing to the Lib Dems promising a Student Premium – modelled on the well-received Pupil Premium – at the next election. First proposed by his colleague Stephen Williams, Tim writes the Student Premium “could potentially change the game in terms of student uptake, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds”. Here’s an excerpt of his article for the April issue of the magazine, Politics First:

Liberal Reform had this to say about the measures contained in yesterday’s budget:

Liberal Reform welcomes much of this year’s budget, which once again has a clear Liberal Democrat thread running through it. From income tax to pensions, the changes announced by the chancellor come from Lib Dem thinking.

There is one area where we would liked to have seen further progress, and that is on housing.

As Jeremy indicates at the beginning of his remarks, he can answer the question shortly: the Lib Dems are the proper home for liberals. But fortunately for the audience he elaborated a little, including some challenges that he thinks the party has to meet if it is to remain at the liberal cutting edge.

In the wake of Vince Cable’s announcement that the Royal Mail would be privatised, we asked Liberal Reform and the Social Liberal Forum for their comments. We haven’t received anything from SLF yet, but here is what Liberal Reform co-chair Alan Muhammed had to say:

Liberal Reform welcomes the floatation of the Royal Mail, an organisation that has long required reform. These moves will generate the biggest employee share scheme for 30 years and enables greater access to capital, crucial for sustaining the Royal Mail as a successful commercial business, delivering a vital service that the nation values.

Danny Alexander MP will tomorrow announce details of capital spending plans, a result of hard-fought negotiations led by Vince Cable and others. The Social Liberal Forumm recognises that further cuts to current spending in the Chancellor’s Spending Review today are unlikely to repair public finances in the absence of robust economic recovery. Today’s announcements are insufficient to tackle our real economic challenges following the banking crisis and the alarming collapse

George Osborne will stand up in the House of Commons on Thursday to announce the government’s intentions for public spending for the 2015-16 financial year in circumstances he neither anticipated nor wished for.

As a result of weaker economic growth and a revision to the estimates of the capacity of the British economy, the structural deficit that the coalition had hoped to eliminate by the time of the next election will exist well beyond it, meaning further spending cuts and tax rises.

As one might expect, groups within the Lib Dems are united in welcoming George Osborne’s announcement that the coalition will deliver the Lib Dem policy of a £10,000 income tax personal allowance next year, earlier than previously expected. Both the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Reform also agree that the chancellor needs to be more ambitious when it comes to stimulating economic growth, though the groups diverge somewhat on how to do so.

Both Liberal Reform and the Social Liberal Forum have commented on the measures contained in yesterday’s autumn (read winter) statement.

First up, Liberal Reform welcomed many of the measures – particularly the faster increase in the income tax personal allowance – but expressed concerns about the party’s approach to the negotiations on the statement:

Liberal Reform welcomes many of the individual measures outlined in the Autumn Statement. The faster-than-expected increase in the income tax personal allowance and the freeze in fuel duty are particularly welcome, and reflect the Liberal Democrat priority of reducing the tax burden on those on low and middle

This topic has generated more emails, blogs and tweets from angry Lib Dems than anything I can remember. Party members seem to be united in their opposition to increased monitoring, so much so that statements from the so-called right and left of the party are virtually interchangeable.

Any furthering of the already-extensive powers to interrogate peoples’ communication, especially in the absence of proper oversight, would constitute an ineffective and illiberal intrusion of our civil

In the last year, three new Lib Dem groups have been launched to an unsuspecting world and to an often-suspicious Lib Dem blogosphere. In chronological order, they are: Social Liberal Forum (SLF), Liberal Left, and Liberal Reform.

2011 saw the second full year of Liberal Democrat participation in national government. It also saw the beginning of a process to test the waters for the creation of a grassroots grouping supporting the economic and social liberalism, the individual and political liberty that is so valued by our party. Discovering a good level of support for the idea, we decided to proceed. Our mission statement can be found on our website, but its preamble should give you an idea of the direction we intend to take.

Liberal Reform exists to promote four-cornered freedom in the Liberal Democrats – personal, political, social and